Blog

The advent of digital marketing has helped organisations around the world see not just their brand but their customer base scale to heights that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago.

According to research from Gartner, brands that leveraged strong digital marketing strategies saw 10.9x more site traffic than their peers in 2022 and grew revenue by 8.6%. Gartner said, “Digital is no longer just a means of enhancing customer relationships; it’s a primary medium for building new connections with target audiences.”

Helping enterprises achieve those goals is Kota-based Digital Go Where, an AI-enabled, data-driven digital marketing agency. Founded in 2021 by Bhargavi Rathi, who is also the startup’s CEO, the company’s suite of digital services are focused on generating sales from online channels, increasing brand awareness, SEO, and go-to-market strategies.

She explains, “Once we figure out our client’s market fit we build strategies, identifying high-ticket customers and targeting them. For that, we do everything from SEO and paid ads to LinkedIn ads, email marketing, PPC, and more.”

Rathi began her career as a geographic information systems (GIS) analyst, but soon realised that the market in India was very limited. She pivoted to digital marketing after completing an executive MBA in marketing from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, and then headed an ecommerce company before moving to Singapore.

Her founding thesis for Digital Go Where began taking shape when working for a corporate services startup InCorp Group in Singapore, where she found that a lot of companies used only referral or network marketing, and that consulting companies could embrace digital marketing to be a thought leader and scale up. Rathi explains, “This experience not only deepened my understanding of marketing but also provided me with valuable insights into scaling a fragmented industry. I learned strategies and tactics for transforming a small company into a multinational corporation, further enhancing my skill set and broadening my perspective.”

She began working with those clients, mainly from the tax and accounting professional industry, eventually moving back to India and setting up the Digital Go Where. Her first hire was her sister-in-law, Ritika Gupta, who is now the company’s Director of Finance. Since then, her company has expanded to a team of 10, along with freelancers in Mumbai, Singapore, the US, the UK, and in New Zealand, handling more than 20 international clients.

One of the main hurdles she faced as a bootstrapped founder was finding the right talent who shared her vision for the company. “I would get clients very easily, but it’s also about how dedicated you are to the client. And that, for me, is the core thing about Digital Go Where — we’re very client focused, if even at three o’clock or four o’clock at night the client needs to speak to us, we will work for the client,” she says, adding that she hopes India’s workforce will also take to working more for startups.

“Over the past 10 years, I’ve worked with four startups. I was able to take all those experiences and then build my own startup. That kind of risk-taking capacity helps you when you learn things from scratch. I think that is very important, especially in a country like India,” she shares.

iStart Rajasthan, the state government’s flagship startup programme, was of great help while setting up her startup after moving back to India, Rathi says. Its incubation centre and network connections helped her set up a proper base and grow her team in a short period of time.

“The environment at the centre is amazing. You start attending events, meeting people, investors keep coming in, and much more. It helps us build a better network ecosystem altogether. The mentors also tell you about the opportunities you can tap into which will help you grow your business,” she says, and adds that the startup is also expecting a grant through the iStart Rajasthan programme to help scale.

In addition to expanding the industries and geographies they work in, Rathi says her long-term goal is to to become one of the top digital marketing companies for B2B and ecommerce businesses. “We might also move to becoming a product company, because once we have enough data and understanding, we can build a product leveraging the latest technology, and enabling the entire team to be tech-driven, so that you can keep scaling up,” Rathi concludes.